Miguel Hidalgo: White Liberal Par Excellence

On the 16th of September in 1810 a Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo gave his famous ‘cry of Dolores’ calling on the inhabitants of the small town of Dolores and New Spain as a whole, to rise up in rebellion against the Spanish. This event is seen as the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence which would last on and off until 1821. By that point Hidalgo was long dead, having been captured and executed in 1811. The independence movement was taken over by another priest named Jose Maria Morelos but he too failed and was killed in 1815. Both these men and the guerrilla fighters who took up the cause after them were liberal, but ultimately it was conservative forces that succeeded in winning independence after rejecting the ascendancy of a liberal constitution in Spain.

Hidalgo came from a well-to-do family and was able to get a good education first from the Jesuits and later at the University of Mexico City. He became an ordained priest in 1778 and for a couple of years in the 1790s was rector of the college of San Nicolas. He was forced to resign partly because of his outspoken liberal views and partly because of his love of gambling and women (Hugh M. Hamill Jr., The Hidalgo Revolt, 65). After he left his post at San Nicolas he went off to become a rural priest which allowed him to isolate himself from the bureaucracy and go full egalitarian liberal with no fear of recrimination. He eventually settled in Dolores.
Much like Stalin, despite having an extensive religious education Hidalgo was not a real Christian:

At Dolores Miguel Hidalgo’s orientation was almost entirely secular. He began the day, it is true, by saying Mass. The rest of his daily routine found him with his industrial ventures and his reading. Quite obviously Hidalgo never felt the spiritual call associated with devout and dedicated clergymen. He had not even assumed the full duties of a parish priest until he was almost forty. The basic vow of chastity was apparently never given any consideration. It seems the priesthood was a sinecure for Hidalgo… Later, when he was no longer connected with the administration, his clerical rank provided him with a good annual income. As he grew older, he moved to richer and richer parishes. As long as he performed the minimum duties expected of him, the Church hierarchy had no complaint. He seems to have had no difficulty delegating most of his responsibilities of the church in Dolores. (The Hidalgo Revolt, 87). Moreover, his clerical occupation gave him a level of prestige which allowed Hidalgo to mingle with men of importance on the one hand and Indians and half-castes on the other. This would prove important for Hidalgo because he soon became part of a plot by American-born Whites to replace Spanish-born Whites as the dominant force in New Spain. In 1810 the population of the Spanish colony was c. 18% White, 22% mixed and 60% Indian (Timothy J. Henderson, The Mexican Wars of Independence, xx) and so Hidalgo’s fellow plotters hoped to use the larger non-White contingents of the population for their own purposes, but they failed to realize that the Indians and other non-Whites were not hateful towards European-born elites, but rather ALL Whites (The Hidalgo Revolt, 111). There was no difference in their mind. Hidalgo, for his part, wanted to do more than use the non-Whites, he wanted to be their savior. He wanted to lead them–and Indians in particular–to a glorious victory over the White man and obtain justice for past misdeeds.

Hidalgo referred to his uprising as a Reconquista, tapping into Indian nationalism, and he gave his mostly Indian army freedom to do as they wished to Whites and non-Whites alike. Hidalgo’s diverse coalition “gladly gave themselves to robbery, pillage and rape.” (The Hidalgo Revolt, 135). The most infamous action by Hidalgo’s forces was at the town of Guanajuato. The town was looted of everything of value including food and alcohol, which was quickly consumed by the Indians. Nearly all the 800 Whites living there were killed (The Mexican Wars of Independence, 80). There were other massacres elsewhere; for example, at Guadalajara 350 Spaniards were slaughtered (The Mexican Wars of Independence, 94).

Hidalgo didn’t begin his revolt with the intention of raising an army of anti-Whites, but it soon became clear that his message had the most resonance with non-Whites and Indians in particular so he eventually gave up trying to focus on recruiting Whites to his cause, though some did in fact join him. In the end his largely untrained and disciplined force failed him and he was defeated.

On a funny aside: The Indians were deeply religious and they detested Jews for being heathens. Jews were believed to have tails and apparently captured officials were checked for tails!

Hidalgo is today revered as a hero in Mexico being called the father of the nation. Every year his ‘cry of Dolores’ speech is re-enacted across Mexico and yet his actions make him anything but heroic. Doesn’t bode well for Americans to have to deal with masses of incomers who revere a man like Hidalgo as no doubt many ‘natural conservatives’ view him as such.
One can in many ways compare Hidalgo to the White liberal of today, although he is more violent. Like Hidalgo they come from good backgrounds, are highly educated and follow a heretical variant of Christianity. Like him they devoutly worship at the shrine of egalitarianism. They have gone from sympathising with dark skinned peoples to actively promoting their interests or perceived interests, at the cost of the interests of their racial fellows. We can see today how the White liberal has completely abandoned any sense of racial solidarity and would rather go out of their way to promote and advance the cause of non-Whites; they view their own people as a problem. Like Hidalgo White liberals today They dream of being a White saviour leading colored masses to victory over injustices whether real or imaginary and just like Hidalgo their dreams will lead to nightmares.